Giselle
by Fallowdoe
Summary: My take on Cordelia's resurrection. Takes place Post-'Destiny'.


Fred sank back into her chair, clutching her papers close to her chest. Eve's voice was white noise, the words melting together into a flow of digits and percentages.  
  
She shifted her legs, found herself toying with the slight pilling on her cardigan. A vent behind her blew cool air across her neck. It purred its soft, metallic rumbling in the background.  
  
She couldn't concentrate.  
  
"Itemized returns of the approval statistics indicate a three percent growth in..."  
  
The light from the windows was fading, casting a pale orange glow over Angel's shoulders, where he sat at his desk, chin rested on folded hands. His shadow, cast across the smooth surface, was long in the dim, genteel lighting of the office.  
  
"...resulting in an over-arching refigurement of the quarterly estimation..."  
  
Charles watched Eve intently, from across the room. Fred saw the light in his eyes and knew he was searching through the rush of words, trying to catch something of Eve and her shaded motives in them. As if budget projections held an arcane power to reveal the darkness within. Graphs plotted progress across the projection screen like runic stones cast on a cave floor.  
  
"...the current encumbrance of secondary funds indicates a need for further..."  
  
Wesley was unreadable, where he sat watching. His eyes were grim, and his thoughts were his own.  
  
Fred felt her pulse racing with anxiety. She picked again at that fine layer of pilling, and added them to the little pile of shell pink fluff on the arm of her chair.  
  
She didn't know how to say what she was going to say. And she didn't know how to wait to say it, until Eve had gone and she could speak to them in private.  
  
And, worst of all, she didn't want the meeting to end. Because then she'd have to tell them all what she knew. And she didn't want to do that. The empty limbo of figures and meaningless administrative jargon seemed preferable, to that.  
  
Anything was preferable to telling Angel about Cordelia.  
  
But she was the scientist. Scientists deal in hard truths, and this was and always would be the duty of her role. To never shrink away from even the hardest truths.  
  
But she didn't know, even through this, how to tell Angel that the woman he loved was dying. Or that there was only the pale shadow of a chance to save her.  
  
---  
  
Fred perched on the bar stool, staring blankly forward at the rows of bottles and taps before her. Her face stared back from the long mirror.  
  
It had been a difficult thing, but she felt no better now that it was done. When she called Wesley and Angel aside, as the rest rushed off to other tasks and other lives outside the office.  
  
"I need to tell you something, Angel..." she had said, tone hushed, "And I think Wesley should know too, because I think he can help."  
  
Angel stepped closer to her, looked her straight in the face with that strange sort of earnest directness that was unique to him.  
  
"It's... it's about Cordelia," she said in a rush of words, "Her condition-- it's worsening. She's been losing weight rapidly, and over the last few days, there've been seizures, erratic brain activity..."  
  
"What kind of seizures?"  
  
"That's why I need Wesley," she said, "This coma is of supernatural origin. Whatever is happening, I'm having difficulty tracking anything other than its progress. And it's not good. If... if we don't do anything soon--"  
  
Fred looked down, but the scientist in her continued.  
  
"If we don't do anything-- if she doesn't wake up-- she'll die."  
  
"So we wake her up," Angel said, his tone cold with determination.  
  
"This is why we need Wesley. There's nothing physically wrong with Cordelia. She's a healthy woman. Strong. If we were just talking science, she would be awake already."  
  
"You believe that there's a mystical cure for her condition," Wesley interjected.  
  
"I think there may be-- I've tried a few things on my own, before coming to you. Our in-house psychics can't break through to read her condition. She's protected. Something very powerful doesn't want anyone to be able to reach into what she knows. There are walls set up around her that are very strong-- they're binding her. They would kill anyone who tries to break through them."  
  
"But we have to find a weakness and break through."  
  
"I think it's our only chance..."  
  
"Do it," Angel said.  
  
Wesley was looking down, brow furrowed, deep in thought. Fred stepped towards Angel, pity and sadness welling in her gut.  
  
"Angel, please remember, we don't know if--"  
  
"Just do it," he said, "Do anything you have to. You have all our resources. Just get it done."  
  
And Wesley had nodded, muttered vacantly that he had something in mind, and walked off. Fred had tried to lay a hand on Angel's arm.  
  
"Angel--"  
  
But he pulled his arm away with that speed of his that always reminded her he wasn't human.  
  
"I'm fine... just... do it," he said, turning to the windows, where the last of the sun was streaking the many-towered sky with bright colors. In its light, his face was stained red.  
  
And so she had left. And gone to the bar across the way. She wanted to be somewhere noisy, too noise to think, for a while.  
  
Fred sighed, leaning on the bar. She played with the glass in front of her and stared at it, untouched.  
  
Another glass dropped down next to it. The hand that offered it was covered in old leather.  
  
"Tough day at the office, then?" the voice asked.  
  
"Spike, I--"  
  
"Should tell the caped avenger you won't take whatever sh--"  
  
"Spike!" she yelled. The music almost drowned her out.  
  
He went suddenly silent, head tilted inquisitively to one side.  
  
"I'm..." she said, brushing her fingers through her hair, and realizing her hands were trembling. She felt the pricks of tears forming in the corners of her eyes, and forced them back.  
  
"I just have some stuff on my mind..."  
  
He sat down on the stool next to her.  
  
"I can see that," he responded, "So what's troubling paradise?"  
  
She leaned into her hand.  
  
"I don't think I want to talk about it," she said, "It's just... work."  
  
Spike nodded. Fred noticed again that he was considerably quieter around her than when he was with the others. He was trying to read her, and she was uncomfortably sure he could read more in her face than she wanted him to know.  
  
But he didn't press her. Just stood again, patted her shoulder with an awkward sort of camaraderie that made it obvious he wasn't used to having friends.  
  
"Don't worry yourself rotten, love," he said, "Whatever's troubling you... you're a bright sort, and you'll bring it right in the end."  
  
---  
  
The doll was running, as dolls often did. They ran from her on ivory legs. They tried to fly on asphalt and concrete and brick and cobblestone. But no one flew faster than she.  
  
The doll was bleeding, the raking scratches across its cheek ran red with trails of blood. It was breathing fast, careening down the dark sidewalk, its hair flowing back behind it in still night.  
  
It was pretty, and wise. It had turned to run, as soon as Drusilla slashed at its cheek. It was fast. It wore a track and field t-shirt, from a far away high school.  
  
But Drusilla knew she could follow where it wandered. She couldn't see it anymore, around the corner and beyond the streetlights. But she knew where it was going. She could hear its thoughts echoing out like a pebble making rings in a pond.  
  
"Oh God... If I can reach the park I can lose her... if I can reach the trees I can hide there... maybe find someone..."  
  
She stepped into a pool of streetlight, and inspected her fingernails a moment. The red was drying quickly beneath them, in the rivulets down her arm. She delicately held her fingertips under her nose, and inhaled the scent. Soft, like youth. It had many friends, but didn't really love them save for how they could love it back.  
  
She was wizened to the ways of things that moved and breathed and walked, though no one knew it. And she knew love was often as this. Love was very seldom deeply held.  
  
And she started to walk, swiftly. She could cut through an alley and meet the stand of trees quite quickly. The dollish girl would be quite surprised. And then they could talk, a while.  
  
Alleys were dark and dirty. She moved briskly through it, barefoot and silent, carefully sidestepping puddles and pools of indiscriminate filth.  
  
She didn't like alleys. She didn't care for any of the dark or dirty corners of cities. Except sometimes.  
  
Sometimes, she remembered wistfully, they held precious things.  
  
But her William was dead. She'd seen his star fading in the spring, and, in the clearer moments when she actually remembered him, her heart was heavy with the knowledge so that it might swell and break.  
  
She sighed, saddened as she stood there. But that's when she heard the mewling. In an instant, the doll and William were both forgotten, and that young student ran away, scarred but alive, to a mother and a family and a future.  
  
"Come kitten," she whispered, delighted. The pile of cardboard beside her rustled.  
  
She knelt in the pool of slimy dirt at her feet, and smiled, dark eyes shining.  
  
"Come kitten and speak with me..."  
  
The head poked out, tabby grew. She giggled her delight. It cautiously regarded her, and she held out her blood-stained hand.  
  
It sniffed, tickling her with its whiskers, and then gave a bloodied finger a tentative lick.  
  
"There kitten, you know hunting now..." she whispered, "But do you know why the mice are banished?  
  
She picked it up, very small, so small it fit in the pocket of her velvet coat.  
  
"We shall know each other a while," she said softly, "Perhaps we shall climb a tree and--"  
  
Her head darted to the side. A dark figure stood at the end of the alley. She had been too distracted to hear its approach. It aimed at her with a strange sort of gun, its face grave.  
  
Suddenly there was pain like a stinging of wasps. One, two three. As she looked down, she saw the darts on her chest and sleeve a moment before the blackness took her, and she collapsed into the dirty, brown alley pool. 


End file.
